Music

Music Director Jeffrey Kahane performed and conducted Mozart's Piano Concerto number 27 Saturday evening, June 5, 2010 with the Colorado Symphony at Boettcher Hall. (Karl Gehring, The Denver Post)

Chris Hunt served on the Colorado Symphony board for more than five years. But when he heard about Denver's plans to build the soon-to-open Clyfford Still Museum, he shifted focus and jumped at the chance to be its founding board president.

"In my mind it was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," said Hunt, founding partner and chairman of Caerus Oil and Gas. "It's a unique institution that can't be replicated."

In other words, stodgy old symphony out, trendy new art museum in. Who can blame a board member for wanting to be where the action is?

But such shifts have meant problems for the Colorado Symphony, which is in deep financial straits these days because it has been unable to lure a strong and stable board of directors — and benefit from the money they bring to the table.

Ticket sales are up. Income is zooming. And still the symphony is in a fight for its life. Deep in debt, it needs cash and straight-ahead support from individuals and corporations — the kind of donations major urban orchestras have long relied on.

But, as a lot of orchestras are discovering, it's not as easy to find as it used to be.

"It speaks to leadership, and it speaks to how broadly you can communicate a positive message to the importance of having a symphony, and a good symphony, as part of Denver," Hunt said.

Struggle for the arts

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No doubt, many nonprofits are struggling these days. The economy has wreaked havoc on the cash flow and stock portfolios of prospective donors. When they do give, it's increasingly to such areas as education and human services. In tough times, organizations that feed hungry children and cure diseases have an easier time making their argument for support.

It also doesn't help that orchestras have become a bad-news industry. Audiences are aging, instrument-only ensembles can't compete in a multimedia age, and time-starved and tech-savvy consumers aren't content to just sit and listen. They want to follow a story, to interact. Many think orchestras are losing their social cache along with their appeal to sponsors and supporters.

Few are fearing that the symphony will fold over its current crisis, even though that means overcoming a cash deficit of $1.2 million. More immediately, it means keeping up spirits in the face of dramatic salary cuts for musicians and winning the confidence of ticketbuyers after its announcement this week that it was canceling half it concerts for the next two months But it won't be easy.

"Like any organization, they're going to need to build trust and goodwill and continue to have longtime supporters of the organization but also bring in kind of new blood and new people into their world," said Deborah Jordy, executive director of the Colorado Business Committee on the Arts.

Primarily, the work will be done by a new board of directors because more than 20 of the orchestra's 30 community board members resigned in September. The reason: fatigue over trying to make an art form survive in a difficult environment, and rancor between the musicians' union and the board as they haggled over money.

Board members worked months to hatch a solution to the CSO's problems but found answers elusive. In his resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Denver Post, board member Michael Dowling cited the "absence of a reasonable plan" to improve the symphony's "weak financial position."

Recovery efforts

The CSO has made some quick moves to recover. Musicians have agreed to a series of dramatic pay cuts. This week, new leadership came in the form of former (and popular) board member Jerome Kern, who was elected co-chairman of the board along with his wife, Mary Rossick Kern.

But the new officers will have to turn around years of dwindling community support.

The symphony has little cash on hand and its endowment, the money it has set aside in interest-bearing accounts to get through operational shortfalls, is "minimal," according to an internal report assembled this year.

"When you look at organizations that are stable, they are stable for a lot of reasons, and part of it is that they have a large endowment intact," Jordy said.

And that, she said, "comes from having a strong board."

Among the symphony's 10 canceled concerts was a version of "Romeo and Juliet" that was to feature a community stalwart, the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble.

The crisis means one less high-profile gig for the troupe, but founder and director Cleo Parker Robinson said she thinks the symphony's setback is temporary.

"I've seen them go through many, many transformations, and I believe they can do it because we have an incredible community," Parker said of the orchestra. "They're not going to let our symphony die, that's for sure."

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